Indonesia: An Empire held together by torture Fri, 4 Feb 2000 08:32:57 -0500 Via NY Transfer News * All the News That Doesn't Fit Received from Joyo Indonesian News An Empire held together by torture IoS 23.1.2000 Joan Smith Even today the men responsible for the outrages still hold powerful positions Earlier this month, in a youth hostel in the Cotswolds, a young woman from East Timor stood up and began to speak in a low, nervous voice. The winter sun streamed through the windows but what she had to say could hardly have been more at odds with the setting. Her elder sister had been kidnapped by the Indonesian army after her husband, a resistance fighter, fled to the hills. As part of a deliberate policy to demoralise the guerrillas, she was passed to a different Indonesian army officer for sexual purposes every few months. During this time she gave birth to four children by different fathers. Other women from East Timor tell a similar story. The word for this type of enforced prostitution is concubinage. Most of us associate it with the ancient Greeks, who carried off the women of Troy as war booty. But what I heard at this conference, on the reconstruction of East Timor, was a catalogue of abuses by the Indonesian army including a systematic campaign of sexual terror. Someone who visited the island during the occupation told me how surprised he was by the number of girls who confided that their ambition was to become a nun. They hoped it would, protect them from rape by Indonesian soldiers. They were wrong. Indonesia is often described as the fourth largest country in the world. It is not. It is an empire, a colonial power which has held together by means of torture, rape and wholesale murder. During the Suharto regime, to their shame, successive British governments armed and trained the presidents thugs as a bulwark against communism in south-east Asia. Even today, the men responsible for the outrages in East Timor still hold powerful positions in the Indonesian military. The Indonesian President, Abdurrahman Wahid, calls them "dark forces" and one of his Cabinet ministers, Sarwono Kusu-maatmadja, has warned that they may be plotting a coup against the fragile civilian government. The empire is crumbling, with East Timor's achievement in evicting its oppressors acting as a catalyst for uprisings elsewhere, while the army is accused of provoking religious conflicts. There are daily reports of violence in the Ambon island chain, the Maluku region, the resort island of Lombok, the provinces of Sumatra and Sulawesi, and the island of Bintan. Would any sensible person pile more arms into this combustible situation? Of course not. But that is what weapons manufacturers are poised to do after the British government failed to support an attempt to extend the European Union arms embargo on Indonesia, which expired last week. British companies will have to apply for licences, and the weapons must not be used for internal oppression, but it is unclear how these sanctions could be enforced after a coup. Astonishingly, the Foreign Secretary, Robin Cook, in an exchange with Labour MP Arm Clywd, defended the lifting of the arms embargo as long as the situation remained under review. In two other cases, involving arms sales to Pakistan and Zimbabwe, his department is believed to have been overruled after lobbying by two other ministries, Defence and Trade & Industry. Perhaps the most extraordinary aspect of the wrangle over arms sales is the way it has resurrected the ghost of the Scott Report, aka Mr Cook's finest hour. Who could forget his fiery rhetoric in the House of Commons as he led the assault on a Conservative government which sold arms to Saddam Hussein against the advice of the Foreign Office? Now he finds himself caught in precisely the same interdepartmental conflict, with the "ethical dimension' of his foreign policy in tatters. For those of you who do not have the report on your bedside tables, it is worth recalling that after the Iran Iraq war ground to a ceasefire in 1988, British companies were desperate to re-arm Saddam but hampered by the guidelines that were imposed during the hostilities.When the junior Foreign Office minister William Waldegrave protested that Iraq posed a threat to the entire Middle East, he "found himself exposed and attacked on two flanks", according to Sir Richard Scott. In particular, the late Alan Clark minister for defence procurement, was described by an official as "gung-ho for defence sales". At a meeting in July 1990, Foreign Office objections were over-ruled and ministers agreed, to relax the guidelines. The prime minister, Mrs Thatcher, was informed and her private secretary, Sir Charles Powell, confirmed in writing that she approved. What happened next should be giving Mr Cook, who knows the Scott Report backwards, sleepless nights in his apartment in Carlton House Terrace. A week later our new ally, to whom British arms salesmen were so eager to display their brochures, surged over the border and invaded Kuwait. ends +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ TAPOL, the Indonesia Human Rights Campaign 111 Northwood Road, Thornton Heath, Surrey CR7 8HW, UK Phone: 0181 771-2904 Fax: 0181 653-0322 email: tapol@gn.apc.org Internet: www.gn.apc.org/tapol Campaigning to expose human rights violations in Indonesia, East Timor, West Papua and Aceh 26 years - and still going strong ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ ================================================================= NY Transfer News Collective * A Service of Blythe Systems Since 1985 - Information for the Rest of Us 339 Lafayette St., New York, NY 10012 http://www.blythe.org e-mail: nyt@blythe.org ================================================================= nytpac-02.04.00-08:32:55-847